Reading at home

Make reading fun

Reading at home needs to be fun and easy. It should be something you both look forward to, and a time for laughter and talk.

• Find a comfortable, quiet place for the 2 of you to cosy up and read for 10 to 15 minutes.
• If you or your child start to feel stressed, take a break and read the rest of the story aloud yourself. Keep it fun.
• Make some puppets from old socks, cardboard tubes or use cut-outs on sticks and so on, that you and your child can use to act out the story you have read. You can also dress up and make it into a play.
• Play card games. You can make the cards yourself.
• Read songs, waiata, poems and rhymes and sing them together, too.

Take your child to the library

• Help them choose books to share.
• Find other books by the same author or on the same topic or look for more information online (you might have to be the reader for this one).

Talk about reading

• Talk about the story and the pictures, other stories you have read, and experiences you have both had that are like those in the story.
• Sometimes you can be the listener, sometimes the reader and sometimes you can take turns. They might like to read to the cat, their teddy or other whānau members.
• Keep reading to them no matter how old they are. They can understand more challenging books than they can read themselves.
• Encourage your child to read all sorts of things, for example, online menus for streaming platforms, street signs and food labels. Simple recipes are great, and you get to eat what you’ve read about, too!

Writing at home

Make writing fun

• Encourage your child to write whether it is on paper or on a device. It is OK for you to help and share the writing. Praise the effort they are putting into their writing.
• Once they have finished writing, encourage them to go back and check what they have written.
• Make a physical or digital photo book and get your child to write captions.
• Scrapbooks paper and digital scrapbooks are fun, too. Get your child to write captions or stories for photos or pictures found online about a favourite subject, dogs, your family, motorbikes or the latest toy craze.
• Play with words. Finding and discussing interesting new words can help increase the words your child uses when they write. Look up words in an online dictionary or talk to family and whānau to find out more about the meaning and the whakapapa (origins) of the words.

Give them reasons to write

• Write lists such as ‘Things I need from the shop’, ‘Games that I enjoy’, ‘Things I want to do in the holidays’. The last one can be cut up and go into a box or bag for a lucky dip when the holidays finally arrive.
• Write out recipes or instructions for other people to follow. It will be especially fun if the instructions are for an adult.
• Keep a diary, especially if you are doing something different and exciting. Your child can draw the pictures or find photos for the diary. Their diary could be done online too.
• Write letters, cards, and messages to friends, family and whānau. You might write replies sometimes, too.
• Write secret messages for others to find in their lunch box or under their pillow.

Talk about their writing

• Make up a different ending for a favourite story together and get them to write it down.
• Ask them to write about pictures they draw. Get them to tell you the story.
• Keep writing fun and use any excuse you can think of to encourage your child to write about anything, any time.

Maths at home

Talk together and have fun with numbers, shapes, games, and patterns

Help your child to:

• find and connect numbers around your home and neighbourhood, for example, find 15, 17, and 19 on letterboxes, which ones are even and which are odd?
• count forwards and backwards in 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s starting with different numbers, for example, 58, 60, 62, 64, 66 then back again (count in 5s and 10s on a clock)
• add and subtract numbers, for example, 53 + 21, 29 + 9, 55 - 32
• find out the ages of family or whānau members
• give step-by-step instructions on how to do something
• use language like certain, likely, unlikely and impossible when they are making a prediction.

Use easy, everyday activities

Involve your child in:

• making lunch or a meal for a party or a hui. Make sandwiches in different shapes: Can they cut their sandwich in half? Can they cut the other sandwich in half a different way? Find out what sandwiches people like to eat: How many people like cheese, how may like chicken?
• sorting items such as washing, odd socks, toys or cans while tidying up
• remembering and repeating phone numbers they might need
• telling the time using language like o’clock, half past and quarter past
• a shape and number search together wherever you are, like numbers of shoes, shapes of doors and windows
• comparing how long it takes to do different things, for example the amount of time it takes to drive to koro’s house versus walking to koro’s house
• helping at the supermarket. Ask your child to get specific items, for example, 2 litres of milk or 250g of mince.

For wet afternoons, school holidays and weekends

Get together with your child and:

• use maths words during play (treasure hunts, obstacle courses, building huts). For example, ‘under', ‘over’, 'between’, 'around’, ‘behind’, ‘up’, ‘down', ‘heavy’, ‘light', 'round’, ‘your turn next’, ‘before’, ‘after’, ‘left’ and ‘right’, ‘square’, ‘triangle’. You can use your first language
• play with big cardboard boxes using words like ‘inside’, ‘outside’
• play games and do puzzles or jigsaws, ‘I spy something that is longer, bigger, smaller than ...’
• do water play using different shaped containers and measuring cups
• bake and talk to your child about the recipe and ingredients, and how many pieces you need to feed everyone
• dance to music and sing and clap to favourite songs
• make and play stick games with tī rākau or newspaper rolls
• play with a pack of cards or dice
• fold and cut paper dolls and other repeating shapes
• make up addition and subtraction problems using numbers to 100
• look at a calendar and ask, for example, ‘how many days or weeks until an event?’, ‘how many days in the month?’, ‘how many weekends?’
• trace over repeated patterns, for example, kōwhaiwhai patterns
• encourage your child to look for patterns
• make a play shop with priced items, and take turns paying with pretend money
• take turns to make a simple structure with Lego or blocks, and the other person has to replicate it.

Download the year 2 resources